It's
been a wild ride for Tesla Motor company enthusiasts. After
months of eager
anticipation, the company became the first automotive public
offering since Ford in 1956, and dumped
15.3 million shares onto the market aggressively priced at $17 (2
million of these shares were sold late, via an over-allotment
option).

That high price turned out to be an early
victory for investors, who saw share prices spike up to a peak of
30.42 last Wednesday -- a gain of 78.8 percent. However, those
gains have since been erased as TSLA has taken a sharp plunge on the
stock market. The stock now sits
at 15.50 (at press time), well below its IPO price.

The
stock market as a whole has been struggling over the last week, with
the DOW Jones Industrial Average dropping last week into the 9000s
after poor job reports. For an unproven company like Tesla that
particularly spelled trouble.

Josef Schuster, the
Chicago-based founder of IPOX Capital Management LLC and manager of
the Direxion Long/Short Global IPO Fund comments, "The company
is a great concept with relatively weak fundamentals. Markets
are weak and in a weak market right now this is hurting the company
even more."

Despite having one of the first true electric
vehicles on the U.S. market -- the Tesla Roadster, recently update to
"Version
2.5" -- and several
upcoming vehicles, investors are finally falling out of love with
the company and taking a hard look at its financials. Tesla
lost $29.5M USD in Q1 2010 -- almost double what it lost in that
quarter last year, and over half of what it lost overall last
year ($55.7M USD).

Electric vehicles have received a firm
monetary and public commitment from
U.S. President Barack Obama. Tesla faces tough competition
in the near future, from entry-level competitors like GM's 2011 Chevy
Volt and Nissan's 2011 Leaf EV.

However, it'd be premature to
write off Tesla entirely. Its Model S entry-level luxury EV
looks promising, if it can keep costs contained. It also has
a key
new contract with Toyota to help the Japanese automaker
develop electric vehicles.